Crysis

Synopsis

Crysis is set in 2020, when a team of US archaeologists, excavating the mysterious crash site of an ancient asteroid, are taken captive by the North Korean military forces. By that time, the North Koreans had become quite a power in the world. In an attempt to keep the situation

A frozen paradise.

from escalating, the United States government sends in an off-the-books US Army Delta Force team, supported by the aircraft carrier USS Constitution and its battle group.

After the initial conflict, things take a turn for the worse quickly, as there is still intense rivalry between the two nations. While tempers flare and fighting occurs between the North Koreans and Americans, the asteroid opens up, shaking off the worn rock to reveal a hideous two kilometer tall alien ship. Terrifying alien machines pour from the belly of this beast, soon before the ship engulfs the surrounding area inside a large ice sphere. This snap freezes a large part of the island including anyone who was unfortunate enough to be caught within its radius. The sudden drop in temperature is responsible for the wildly fluctuating and extreme weather patterns.

The player takes the role of Jake Dunn, codename Nomad, an elite Delta Force soldier equipped with a futuristic nanosuit with the ability to enhance his speed, strength, armor and allow him to become almost completely undetectable.

Weapons

Almost every weapon is customizable. Each weapon has a rail system on it and the play can run the full gambit of options all the way from silent and deadly with silencers and tranquilizer launchers to total annihilation with the grenade launcher.

Nomad's arsenal includes:

SCAR - A powerful American weapon, sadly it is only found a few times throughout the game, so the player will inevitably run out of ammo and rely on the FY-71 instead. Interestingly, the model resembles a H&K XM8, which was the gun that lost the SOCOM SCAR contract to the FN mk 16/17, hinting at a change in history in that aspect.

Customized SCAR.

Advantage - Highly customizable and quite accurate

Disadvantage - Ammunition is very rare

FY-71 - The primary North Korean weapon, found in abundance throughout the game. Modelled from the 5.45mm AK-74N.

Advantage - Highly customizable and you can find plenty of FY-71 ammo around

Disadvantage - Not as accurate and powerful

MPX8Submachine Gun - A short range submachine gun. Resembles an H&K MP7, also indicated by the name of the gun.

Advantage - Quite accurate and has a rapid rate of fire

Disadvantage - Ammo can run out quite quickly

Tactical Shotgun - The shotgun has two fire modes, buckshot and slug. The benefits of both vary depending on the environment, slug being a more accurate but in close combat less powerful alternative.

Customized Shotgun.

Advantage - Very powerful and deadly in close combat

Disadvantage - Short range

DSG-1Sniper rifle - The sniper rifle in the game. Usually found by looting off the soldiers at the watch towers.

Advantage - Packs quite a punch and is very effective at long range

Disadvantage - limited customization and ammo load

Bauer 1980 SOCOM Pistol - The standard pistol that can be dual wielded if you collect another pistol.

Advantage - A lot of customization can be done and can be quite useful up close if you wield it dually

Disadvantage - Isn't too powerful and the dual pistols can be very inaccurate

Hurricane Minigun - A powerful automatic hand-held minigun.

Advantage - Very powerful

Disadvantage - Ammo runs out too easily and they are quite hard to find

Disadvantage - Slow rate of fire and it is only available during some parts of the game

Rocket Launcher - This launcher can fire up to three rockets, and they are guided in using a laser designator.

Advantage - Very powerful and it has an area effect

Disadvantage - Limited ammo

Weapon Customization

Each weapon has multiple slots for tweaking. Players can change these on the fly during combat, making each weapon highly versatile. Players have an unlimited amount of customization parts; once the sniper scope is obtained, for example, the player can go around putting sniper scopes on every rifle they see, should they so desire. However, they only start with the silencer, the laser pointer, the flashlight, the reflex sight, and the tactical attachment. All other customization equipment must be located in the field.

Slot 1

Silencer - Players can either turn it on or off. Using a silencer slightly reduces the damage each bullet does, but makes each shot almost silent. Plus, hey, a headshot is still a headshot.

Slot 2

Laser Pointer - Points directly at where your bullets are going to go. Undetectable by the enemy, somehow. Although it's kind of a novelty on Easy or Normal, this becomes very useful on the harder difficulties where the crosshair is unavailable.

Flashlight - Lights up the area where your gun is pointing. Duh. This is thoroughly useless; since the player has night vision goggles, all the flashlight does is give away their position in the dark.

Slot 3 - (Activated through alternate fire mode)

Tactical Attachment - Fires tranquilizer darts. One shot, anywhere on the body, will instantly render the enemy unconscious. They will wake up eventually, but they'll be out of your hair for a while. Note: useless against the aliens. Players have access to an infinite number of darts, but the tactical attachment has a recharging period after each shot, preventing you from one shotting an entire enemy encampment in three seconds.

Grenade Launcher - Fires an explosive shell which blows stuff up real good. Available only with the SCAR & FY71 rifles.

Slot 4 - (sights)

Ironsight (default) - The fastest sights option, though it's not as accurate as the others.

Sniper Scope - 4X zoom and 10x zoom variable scope. Available with SCAR, FY71, Precision Rifles, and Sniper Rifles. Not really a great choice unless you're actually using a sniper rifle, and a terrible idea if you're up close.

Nanosuit

The Korean Version of the Nanosuit.

The Nanosuit ends up being your most important weapon in the game. An advanced piece of United States military technology, it is the perfect blend of protection and weaponry. The suit covers the entire body, and is directly tied into the user's muscles and central nervous system. Try not to think about how badly that could go. The nanosuit has a certain amount of power assigned to it, which is reduced with use, but is recharged over time. There are four modes that the Nanosuit provides for t he user:

Strength: In Strength mode, the user becomes super-strong, giving them the ability to punch through walls, jump great heights and distances, kill enemies by throwing them, and fire weapons with high accuracy by dampening the recoil effect.

Speed: In Speed mode, the user becomes incredibly fast, even to the point of dodging enemy fire. Be careful, though, as running at great speeds and hitting objects can cause damage to the user.

Armor: In Armor mode, the user is able to absorb hits that would normally damage the users body. The hits reduce the power of the nanosuit, and once the power hits zero, the users body begins to take hits. This is the default mode for the nanosuit. The user also recharges health at a higher rate in this mode.

Stealth: In Stealth, or Cloak mode, the nanosuit, using light projection renders user invisible. For a short period of time, the user is completely invisible to the outside world. However, moving around whilst in Cloak mode reduces the nanosuit's power; and once power hits zero, the user is visible once more. Oddly enough the suit has the ability to render any weapon the user holds invisible as well, but firing a weapon will cause the user to be visible again and completely drain the energy meter.

Using the Nanosuit effectively in combat is essential to completing this game.

CryEngine 2

From a technical standpoint, Crysis was one of the best looking games out in 2007. And it's also one of the first few games with native support for the DirectX 10 API at the time. It is one among Call of Juarez, Lost Planet, and Company of Heroes (patched revision) as a first generation DirectX 10 computer game.

Interactive Flora - Trees, bushes, grass and leaves bend, freeze and break realistically, in real time depending on the player's, or enemies' actions. It seems only a select few types of vegetation are actually procedurally breakable. Small shrubs, grass, and large trees don't seem to break, whereas palm trees or coconut trees do.

Day and Night Cycle - All lighting on every object in Crysis is dynamic (no pre-generated lighting), so night and day transitions smoothly and accurately from dawn, noon, dusk and midnight, in real time. There seems to be a small hitch in the fact that the moon does not move.

Subsurface Scattering - Light scatters as it passes through translucent objects such as glass, leaves and human flesh. This makes objects look more realistic when they are thin, or can easily allow light to pass through, or diffuse through the material.

3D Ocean Technology - Shaders, physics algorithms, high resolution meshes and textures combine to create realistically animated waves, complete with accurate caustic effects, reflections, as well as refractions. However, the water does not have any physics applied to it. The water does have settings which effect the general look, these settings being environmental factors which don't seem to be dynamic.

HDR Lighting - Simulates the effect of bright light on the human eye. When areas are bright, the 'eye' will adjust to dim the scene so that things are clearer, like our real eyes.

Parallax occlusion mapping - Creates the illusion of depth on flat surfaces, using a shader algorithm which calculates what parts of the texture should be shown and how, depending on a normal map. This is much more advanced than simple bump mapping. This technology also tends to exhibit some artifacts, which can only really be seen when surfaces are viewed at low angles.

Soundtrack:

The Crysis Original Game Soundtrack (included in the special edition and available for purchase separately) was composed by Inon Zur.

** Supported chipsets: NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT or greater; ATI Radeon 9800 Pro (Radeon X800 Pro for Vista) or greater. Laptop versions of these chipsets may work but are not supported. Integrated chipsets are not supported. Updates to your video and sound card drivers may be required.

Console Versions

Crysis was released on Xbox 360 and PS3 on October 4th, 2011 on Games on Demand and PSN as a download only title.

Pricing

Xbox 360: $19.99 or 1600 Microsoft Points

PS3: $19.99

Features

For the first time console players can experience how it all began and play through the open-ended single player campaign.

Fully remastered console experience through the new state of the art CryEngine3 game engine.

New improvements to Crysis i.e. by integrating the Nanosuit controles from Crysis2 and enhanced light and graphic effects.

Download Size

4.6 GB

Changes to the console ports

For the most part, the console ports are identical to the original, but Crytek has cut one mission from the campaign and unlike Crysis 2, there is no multiplayer support.

Crysis Demo

Players interested in testing their system before buying the game can try the official demo at http://www.crysisdemo.com/.

Reception

The Metacritic score for Crysis stands at 91, denoting "Universal Acclaim". Most reviewers praised the incredible visuals, the fluid combat, the nanosuit functions and the gameplay depth. The most common complaint about the game was the high system requirements, and the sometimes inconsistent AI.

Initially, the game was considered a financial failure by both developer and studio, moving less than a hundred thousand units in a few weeks. However, the game made a massive comeback and by February 1st, EA announced that Crysis had gone platinum, meaning sales had exceeded one million copies. While EA is happy with this result, Crytek president Cervat Yerli were less than pleased, claiming that high piracy rates had hurt their sales badly. It was announced soon after that Crytek would be abandoning PC exclusivity, a statement later retracted when Yerli clarified that the future of PC exclusivity with Crytek rested on the sales performance of the standalone expansion Crysis: Warhead. It is unclear whether CryTek were satisfied with the sales of Warhead because the sequel Crysis 2 is cross-platform, thus ending PC exclusivity for the franchise.